


Cold snap

by Splinter



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Movie(s), Sharing Body Heat, Snuggling in inclement weather, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, does it count as huddling for warmth if they're in an established relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:12:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8914918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splinter/pseuds/Splinter
Summary: For the first time in days, she doesn’t feel cold.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Since the Mad Max films are an Australian post-apocalypse, this isn't really a seasonal fic. But I live in the northern hemisphere, and it's cold.
> 
> Thanks to the slack group for tag advice!
> 
> I'm at [lurkinghistoric](http://lurkinghistoric.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.

It’s ten days since the weather turned icy. 

The change has brought extra work shifts and new panics. At times, it’s made the Citadel feel as fragile and ungrounded as her own breath, which hangs visible in the air. It’s not the first time this has happened. In Furiosa’s experience, no cold snap has lasted long. You never know. There’s always reason to worry. 

A night of frost can be enough to kill a plant. They’re shielding the crops with lengths of plastic wrapping, with every kind of insulation they can think of, burning fires in the makeshift greenhouses. The Dag has been sleeping up there, which scared and infuriated Cheedo, until she realised it was cosier than most of the drafty Citadel. There’s a battle for wrapping materials, since pipes and human bodies need insulation, too. They’ve had two burst pipes, both minor. They’ve been lucky.

With the cold and the increased workload, the food supply is under strain. Everyone needs more to eat in cold weather, but they’re terrified that the harvest will fail. The former Wretched are used to licking rocks for dew; children are warned not to try it with the frost that forms on the rock walls. New ailments spring up, just as the herb garden is vulnerable. Old wounds ache. Engine lubricants become less effective, ancient recipes dug out to protect essential mechanisms. 

Yesterday morning, the sky had clouded over, the wind blowing from the north. The weather is easing, and the whole Citadel relaxes with it. It’s still very cold, but they’re starting to think beyond their emergency footing.

Furiosa is back in her own room, wearing most of her clothes at once, a Vuvalini cap over her shorn hair. The past few nights, everyone has been sleeping in common areas, trying to conserve heat. It was sensible, but unsettling. The sisters are used to sleeping in a cuddle puddle, but she isn’t. She’s not the only one.

The nights have been disturbed by other restless sleepers, people crying out or shaking themselves awake. She’s honestly not sure if Max slept at all. His eyes were always open when she woke, even when she jolted up in the night. Several times over the past few days, she’s found him dozing in corners, waking and blinking at the thin sunlight. 

Last night was warmer, so people are edging back to their usual quarters. Furiosa’s room isn’t the coldest, which isn’t saying much. Her window is wedged with spare clothes. Wrapped in a blanket and trying not to shiver, she’s tempted to sneak some of them back. She’s oiling her arm, trying to protect the moving parts. She’s almost finished, has put it back on to test it, when Max comes in.

“I could do your brace?” she offers. He hums his thanks, unbuckling the straps and handing it over. She’s astonished when he takes first his jacket and then his shirt off. He deliberately dumps the warm shirt over her head, helps to ease it down over her other clothes, leaving the sleeve rolled up over her metal arm. She shakes her head when he offers her his jacket.

“You’d freeze. And it would get in the way.” She’s worn his jacket before, never lightly. Like her, it has one arm cut short, but it’s a mirror image: the long sleeve hangs empty over her nub, while the other leaves her full arm bare. Max nods, shrugs his jacket back on and tucks the blanket over her. 

He retreats to the bed, where all her other blankets make a cocoon that still isn’t warm enough. Within seconds, he’s burrowed so deep that she can’t actually see him. 

Finishing her work, she sets the arm and the brace carefully on the desk. Her flesh hand is mostly clean – practice has made her deft enough – but she can’t quite persuade herself that it doesn’t need washing. The water in the jug isn’t frozen, but it’s painfully cold, the towel stiff and harsh against her hand. Her fingers are clumsy when she takes off her boots and her bodice. She leaves everything else on as she crawls into bed, looking for Max, for his skin and his scent and his warmth. 

He surfaces, helping her find him. She’s left the lamp burning, as much for the heat it gives out as for light. She can see him clearly, his straight nose and full lips, his chest hairy where the jacket falls open.

She’s always liked it, the look and the feel of it. In homage to Joe, war boys had shaved and plucked themselves bare: they wanted their devotional tattoos to be seen. She loves Max’s relaxed fuzziness, the dark hair on his chest, the line of it leading down his belly to the thicker, coarser hair above his cock. Along with his scruff of beard and ruffled hair, it’s enough to make him a little bit shaggy. In this weather, that’s particularly appealing. She presses her face to his warm chest, her nose teasing through hair. He gives an indignant grunt.

“S’cold!”

“You’re very warm,” she agrees, snuggling in. Max grumbles, and shuffles away from her. She’s going to protest – surely she’s not that cold – when he reaches back and pulls her towards him, tucking her into the warm spot left by his body. Then he rolls onto her, lying propped on his elbows above her, a solid shelter. He blows on her nose, warming that, too. When she laughs, he kisses her.

“Missed this.” Her voice is small and gruff, but she needs to say it. Max makes one of his softer noises, and kisses her again.

They’d huddled close enough in the common room, but neither of them is at ease with public displays of affection. It’s not that anyone else minds; a few times, she’d been aware of some furtive fucking going on in quieter corners of the room. She hadn’t even been tempted. Between long working hours, worry and disturbed sleep, she’s been bone tired, without the energy for sex. Now she can feel her body waking up, a surge of heat running through her. 

Max feels it too. Kissing her throat, he shifts his weight to one elbow, stroking her through her clothes. She pushes up against him, suddenly frustrated by all the layers she’d kept on. He undoes her fastenings, tugs her trousers down just a little, enough to get his hand down. 

She hadn’t realised how cold she’d got: his fingers are hot on her skin. Max hums, starts to rub her hip. He’s leaning awkwardly beside and over her, rubbing for warmth rather than caressing her. It is not sexy, or at least it shouldn’t be. 

After a moment, he flops down to one side of her and turns her so he can spoon her. It’s taken her a while to get used to the idea that she likes it when he does this, when he reaches out and moves her. When he takes care of her. It hasn’t been simple, accepting her own trust, her body’s response. Her cheeks are hot, despite the cold of the room. She can’t tell if he notices. He kisses her neck, the narrow gap of bare skin between her collar and her cap.

Once they’re settled comfortably together, Max pulls her leathers further down and begins to work over her bum and thighs. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or to wriggle in frustration, because her cunt is right there, already wet, and he’s ignoring it to work on keeping her warm. But it does feel better, having the chill taken off. 

His hands slow down, stroking her. One slides up over her belly, inside her clothes, to cup her breast. Her nipple is hard under his thumb, though she can’t tell if that’s because of the cold or because of him. She sighs and pushes against him, bare skin against his leathers. She can feel that he’s hard, and grinds firmly back, smiling when he groans.

He pushes her layered shirts up to hold her closer, skin on skin. His hand slips between her legs, cupping and stroking. When he parts her lips, he leaves his fingers there, not moving, until she starts to grind against him.

“Lazy,” she gasps, squirming into him. 

“Moving’ll warm you up,” he points out. He’s teasing, but his voice is already hoarse. He relents when she grinds harder, starts to stroke her properly, his fingers curling.

She comes panting, the air cold in her throat when she gasps. She can feel the heat of him at her back, a sheen of sweat between them. Once she’s got her breath back, she rolls over and tugs him onto her, her nub around his neck. 

The next few minutes are messy. They’re wearing too many layers to make this easy, both shoving and fumbling at clothes that bunch up or slide down, getting in the way. Cold air gets under the blankets; she ends up with her leathers around her knees, which still doesn’t give her enough room to wrap her legs around him. She thrashes them off altogether, pulls him closer.

She loves the slick, wet slide as he pushes into her, feeling filled with his arms around her. She holds him tighter and clenches hard, her legs hooked around his waist. He moans, so she does it again. He’s thrusting slow and careful, his forearms braced under her. She stretches and sighs at it, almost humming with the satisfaction of having him, of being safe and warm and private. She can feel him laughing as he leans in to kiss her, his hips rocking deeper. 

When she reaches down to her clit, she realises that her fingers are warm, her body is warm. For the first time in days, she doesn’t feel cold. She stops to ruck her shirts back up, to feel more of his skin while she touches herself. He kisses her again.

She’d joked about laziness, but that’s almost how they’re fucking, slow and sweet and easy. When she comes, it’s with a deep shudder that seems to melt all the jagged little tensions she’s been fighting down for days. She holds him close while he finishes, mumbling into her skin as he lets go. 

He lies heavier on her when he comes, then eases out of her, still on top but with his elbows braced. She rubs her face against his chest again, inside his jacket. Her nose isn’t cold any more, but she likes the smell and the feel of him.

“You’re like a cat,” he says, kissing the top of her head, where her cap has slipped back. He nudges it straight.

“A cat?” It’s an old world animal, she knows that much. The mothers had talked about them, and they appear in some of Cheedo’s favourite story books. They were kept as companions, sometimes as hunters, loved and indulged. 

“Soft. And graceful. Always knew where the warmth was.” He rolls off, turning to face her. She burrows into him.

“Sounds sensible.” He’s the soft one, always has been, but she doesn’t say so.

“Liked being stroked,” he says, sly, his hand smoothing up her back. She cuddles closer. 

He groans when she prods him to get up and wash, but they’re both sticky, and the wet patch will chill them as it cools. Cold water, the wasteland’s greatest treasure, is every bit as icy and uncomfortable as she was expecting it to be. They scramble back into clothes, leathers and shirts and socks, and get back under the blankets, where some of their heat has lingered. Curling around her, he slides his hand under her shirt, warm on her skin.

“Think it’s less cold?” She nods: it’s chilly, but not so bitter as it was. As she falls asleep, she wonders if that’s the changing weather, or just the warm space that they’ve created.


End file.
